According to many analysts, there is a general affinity between Eastern Orthodoxy and nationalism, especially in Southeastern Europe. The present article aims to draw a more differentiated picture and shows that in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia religious nationalism developed with different intensity and along different paths. Among the three countries compared, Bulgaria has the weakest tradition of Orthodox sacralization of both nation and politics.

The article explores the visual and verbal means that help to represent different identities in the semantic field of death in a contemporary Balkan city, which consists of street necrologies, tombstones and cemetery premises. The research is focused on the city of Prizren situated in the partially-recognized Republic of Kosovo. The data were collected during fieldwork expeditions in 2010 – 2013.